It's the start of a new month, the Democratic convention is over, the torrent of state polls has reduced to a trickle (presumably because pollsters are busy canvassing, trying to measure Kerry's convention bounce), and it's been a week since my last survey of Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection sites -- so I think it's a good time to do it again, to get a base to measure the post-convention results against.
(Notes on my rationale for these figues can be found here).
Now, on to predictions and projections on other sites:
[Note: From each of these websites I've taken the most comprehensive set of numbers offered, if possible without a "toss-up" category or other caveats, just Kerry versus Bush. Many of them differentiate between "solid" or "strong", "slightly" or "weak", and "leaning" or "barely" states, but I've combined them all together in order to present numbers which are as comparable as possible. I encourage everyone to use the links and check each site for the specifics of that site's methodology and presentation. -- Ed]
Chris Bowers (7/29): Kerry 302 - Bush 236 (was: 322-216)
Chuck Buckley (7/31): Kerry 326 - Bush 212 (was: 310-228)
Coldhearted Truth (7/28 - new): Kerry 291 - Bush 247 (new to survey)
Charlie Cook (7/6 - not updated since last survey): Kerry 207 - Bush 211 - ?? 120 (not updated)
*To do this conversion I've assigned any state in which the value of the Bush-wins contract is over 50 to Bush, and any state under 50 to Kerry. For an alternative method, see this comment thread.
Tripias (7/28 - new): Kerry 306 - Bush 232 (new to survey)
Sam Wang (7/23): Kerry 300 - Bush 238 (was: 291-247)
Kerry winning: 18 (was: 17) Kerry ahead: 6 (was: 3) Bush winning: 3 (was: 2) Bush ahead: 1 (was: 1)
Kerry gained: 4 (was: 2) Kerry lost: 12 (was: 11)
Bush gained: 12 (was: 9) Bush lost: 6 (was: 4)
?? gained: 6 (was: 4) ?? lost: 2 (was: 2)
No change: 4 (was: 5) Not updated: 3 (was: 5) New: 4
As the summary indicates, although Kerry is still out in front in terms of how many sites project him to win the Electoral College, or at least as ahead of Bush, he once again lost ground in many of them, while Bush gained ground. However, Kerry's loses typically moved a site from "Kerry winning" to "Kerry ahead," and the sites that show Bush winning or ahead are the same sites as last week and one newly added one. Unassigned states also increased somewhat, due to a number of polls that showed some states (IA, MN) tied.
Overall, our (imaginary) composite map of the Electoral College still favors Kerry.
If anyone has links for any other sites that regularly track Electoral College status, please feel free to send them my way and I'll be glad to add them to the list.
Update: Shortly after posting this, I found two additional sites, Coldhearted Truth and President Elect 2004, so I added them to the list and updated the summary.
Update: Thanks to Dick Riley's tip, I've added another new site, Tripias, and updated the summary.
Update A couple of people have asked me, over the course of my doing this survey, to provide averages. I've resisted, because I'm not quite convinced that such information is all that useful, but, in the spirit of giving the people what they want (and admitting I could well be wrong!), here goes :
ALL SITES MEAN: Kerry 273 - Bush 236 (remainder: 29) MEDIAN: Kerry 276.5 - Bush 240.5 (remainder: 21) MODE: Kerry 264 - Bush 247 (remainder: 27)
SITES WITH NO ?? MEAN: Kerry 288 - Bush 250 MEDIAN: Kerry 290 - Bush 248 MODE: Kerry 291 - Bush 247
So, by whatever measure you care to use, the collective wisdome of these 28 sites is that Kerry is ahead of Bush in the Electoral College.
Update: The proprietor of Pollbooth, Nick Goedert, a law student who worked as an analyst for the Edwards campaign, brought his site to my attention, so I've added it to the list and updated the summary and the averages.
absolutist
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anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
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buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
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Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
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i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
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recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
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